Our First Post

This will be our first blog post ever and we’re excited! Just as eager to get our garden railroad off the ground and running, we’ll need a reason for it to be off the ground. And that reason would be a bridge. A bridge over something. And to get from the ground up to that bridge we’ll need an approach trestle.

Many folks have many different ways of creating a trestle. Even the different railroads had different ways of doing it, right down to the trestle bents. What’s a trestle bent? Well, there’s plenty of information online, but simplistically it’s the individual “tower” structure that is repeated and lashed together with the rest to create an assembly called a trestle.

The key word here is repeated. Most folks agree that a jig will help immensely when repeatedly constructing all those trestle bents needed to assemble a trestle. I’d be happy to make just one bent to start with, but know that I’ll need many more than that, so I make my first cut at making a jig.

Having just replaced the fence between us and our new neighbor here in Mount Dora, I have plenty of well weathered “scrap” wood to rip into the raw materials I’ll need. I start by ripping the scale 6×12 and 12×12 members I’ll need to cobble together that jig.

Our First Jig

Starting with a chunk of ½” plywood, the main “T” portion is aligned, then the angled members drawn in at 5° and 10°, respectively. The straps are drawn in every 10″, a scale 20′ at “half doll house scale”. What’s half doll house scale? Well, if “doll house scale” is one inch represents one foot, or 1:12, then half doll house scale is a ½” represents a foot, or 1:24.

Some would argue that G scale is 3⁄8″ represents a foot, 1:32. USA Trains uses 1:29. Since the Bachmann Big Haulers we have are supposedly 3′ narrow gauge, that would be 1:20.3, sometimes called F scale. I use 1:24 because it makes the math easy and it’s closer to F scale.

Add to that our goal of sharing the space with the “pups” – everything must be built much stronger than normal in order to withstand a direct impact from a hundred pound German Shepherd at full gait. A 12×12 post that is a ½” thick is stronger than one 3⁄8″, so there you have it.

Back to that chunk of ½” plywood… We’ll call a jig for now. Short pieces of the ½” thick scale 12x12s are attached with self tapping screws on either side of the five posts to act as guides. More are placed to help keep the top beam in position. The template helps hold the pieces in alignment during gluing and assembly, but it has shortcomings that must be worked around.

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Cutting those posts to exact length proves to be another challenge. No matter how carefully cut, their lengths are just enough different to force hand selection of each piece. So much for assembly line efficiency!

The scale 6×12 pier sills that delineate each new section of the bent and associated scale 3×10 cross bracing must be attached from the top side and bent then removed from the jig to attach to the other side since no provision was made for them in the jig. Brass brads are used to simulate what would be nuts and bolts on the prototype.

The brass will weather to a dull brown to simulate rusted hardware, yet survive for years without further corrosion as iron or steel would.

Actually, the cross bracing is added last, hand cut to fit and tacked into place using some HO scale track nails! Those will rust away to nothing eventually, but they were only meant to hold the sills in place until the glue cured, and will provide a realistic rusted patina over time.

Our First Bent

This is all brand new, so I’m learning as I go. Ann isn’t very happy with me assembling these in the living room, but there is nowhere else that I can. The garage was really just the old carriage house, two strips of concrete over a dirt floor, with no lights or electricity whatsoever. We’ve added a wood floor, a side door in place of the old window, electricity and lights.

But it’s still a work in progress. I’m fairly limited without an easily accessible workshop. Thankfully most operations are limited to drilling pilot holes and tapping in brads after gluing the pieces together. I need a few quick clamps here and there to hold things together, but manage to get the first bent assembled.

After trying to remove the bent and reinsert it face down, it’s obvious that the jig isn’t even symmetric! It may have drawbacks, but at least I can assemble bents for testing and assessing other operations, such as assembling multiple bents into a trestle.

 

This post is a woefully foreshortened version of all the research and planning required. Some railroads used poles in place of posts. Some used four posts rather than five. Other configurations exist, such as those for two mainlines, with more vertical posts than one. This design is a compromise between the differences and meant for a single track.

It may not be symmetric, and it may not be pretty, but it’s a start. Next up is determining how to stain and seal the bents while giving the impression of creosoted posts and beams. Stay tuned for further developments.